Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. listens during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 4. House Republicans have blocked an attempt by Democrats to chastise Issa for his conduct at a committee hearing. Issa abruptly adjourned a hearing of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. He instructed committee staff to turn off the microphone of the committee’s top Democrat, congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland. The hearing was on the improper targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service. (Lauren Victoria Burke, AP File)

It’s appalling that a columnist of George Will’s stature and pay grade writes so careless a column as the one he recently wrote for The Washington Post.

The column, on the Internal Revenue Service, is full of innuendo, half truths and coincidences that are set in place to invalidate the IRS and employee Lois Lerner, who is a lawyer and knows better than most the purpose and operation of a kangaroo court. She is wisely exercising her Fifth Amendment right to protect herself from a politically motivated attempt to destroy her and to mislead the public to believe that the IRS is being used by the White House to punish its political adversaries.

The exercise goes like this: Get her to testify to politically motivated questions before Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s gathering of henchmen (otherwise known as House Oversight Committee Hearings), and to take words or phrases out of context and mischaracterize them as incriminating. None of these shenanigans will stand up in a court of law where there are rules. But that is not where this game is played.

The back story which was so carefully avoided by Will is about organizations applying for tax exempt status under Section 501(c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code. That statute says that organizations that qualify for this particular tax exempt status are ” generally civic leagues and other corporations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” The statute had its origins in the Revenue Act of 1913, is unchanged and is still the law.

In 1959, the IRS issued its Treasury regulation that inexplicably changed the word “exclusively” to “primarily,” thus creating a loophole that placed a more difficult burden on the IRS worker who has to more thoroughly examine the nature and extent of Sec. 501(c)(4) applicants’ activities. While there is no explanation as to how or why Treasury Department lawyers made so radical a contradiction of the law, we do know that regulations are not written in a vacuum; they are influenced by lobby groups and special interests. We also know that law trumps regulation. So as the IRS rewrites this regulation while being inundated with 140,000 comments from lobbyists and special interest groups it is not “trying to codify its abuses”; it is trying to convey the true meaning and intent of the law.

The January 2012 Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission ruling before the Supreme Court allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited sums on elections, to contribute unlimited sums anonymously to these tax-exempt organizations, as well as to register under IRS Code Sec 501(c) (4) for tax exempt status. The Supreme Court ruling also said that the money could not be used to support electoral candidates.

Since that ruling, Sec 501(c)(4) applications for tax-exempt status have almost doubled. There’s lots of easy money to be had from contributors seeking special favors from politicians who can be bought. The process is simple: get your tax-exempt status, solicit corporations or moneyed political activists (read Koch brothers, George Soros) with the offer that you’ll do their bidding and in comes the money — tax free, anonymous, and in unlimited amounts. Best of all, the anonymity feature of the Supreme Court ruling conceals any quid quo arrangement between donor and tax exempt organization.

Together with the flood of new applications, the IRS received numerous referrals from the public, media, watchdog groups and members of Congress alleging that the IRS was targeting groups with names like Tea Party, Patriots, and Progressive, and had requested unnecessary information from these groups. Several members of Congress requested that the IRS investigate whether some Sec 501(c)(4) organizations were illegally engaged in political campaign activity.

In May 2013, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in response to congressional Republicans requests, issued a report that looked at only IRS handling of Tea Party groups and concluded that the IRS had inappropriately targeted them. The Inspector General did not review whether specific applications for tax exempt status should be approved or denied and thereby missed the point entirely: The real scandal of this overblown, falsely reported story is the abuse of the law by groups who are primarily engaged in political activities.

Each year, there are about 70,000 new applications for tax-exempt status filed under Section 501(c)(1) through 501(c)(29), i.e., there are 29 different types of tax-exempt status. These filings are handled by a team of about 200 IRS employees located in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2012, 80 percent of the money spent by Sec 501(c)(4) organizations came from conservative groups. To operate efficiently the underfunded and understaffed IRS ( total employees about 98,000 in 2012 down from 103,000 in 2010) installed selection criteria that pulled organizations with obvious political names out of the pipeline — the IRS manager who made that decision was John Shafer, who answered “I am a conservative Republican” when asked about his political affiliation by Issa’s House Oversight Committee.

Applicants who provided incomplete, vague, or inappropriate information were then asked for clarifying information that would show that they’re primarily involved in social welfare activities and not supporting electoral candidates. If an organization has something to hide the process will often evolve into back and forth questions and vague or otherwise evasive answers which sometimes culminates in a letter to congressman complaining about being picked on.

One such case involved a group using the name CVFC 501(c)(4) represented themselves as providing “social welfare programs to assist combat veterans to get involved in government.” According to Federal Election Commission records, the group spent nearly $8,000 in radio ads backing a candidate for a House seat in San Diego. The group checked the answer “no” when asked if it was engaged in any political activity to back a candidate for political office. The group’s lawyer, Dan Backer, complained that the IRS asked questions about the group’s political activities that were “sweepingly overbroad” and insisted that the group answered IRS questions appropriately.

The media jumped on the complaints about being picked on and covered the story as though the IRS had treated conservative groups unfairly and even reported the unfounded allegation that the IRS actions were orchestrated by the White House. But there were few if any reports that the IRS was simply doing its job.

Mike Pisano is a retired federal government employee, having served as IRS tax auditor and audit supervisor and FDIC special agent. He lives in Littleton.